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The term additional support needs under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 (the 2004 Act) applies where for whatever reason children or young people are unable to benefit from school education without the provision of additional support. Therefore, the information requested in relation to colleges and universities is not applicable.

An additional support need may not be permanent and does not require a diagnosis. There is a wide spectrum of support that may be needed, from support to overcome barriers arising from health or disability to support for social and emotional reasons, therefore, each child or young person’s needs are unique.

Under the 2004 Act appropriate agencies have a duty to help an education authority discharge their duties unless the help asked for:

• Is incompatible with the agency's statutory or other duties; or
• unduly prejudices the agency in its discharge of its own functions.

For the purposes of the Act, an appropriate agency can be any NHS Board. Therefore, education authorities may make a request to an NHS Board, that a child or young person receives speech or language therapy or attends occupational therapy, where appropriate.

On counselling, local authorities provide six-monthly joint reports to the Scottish Government on both access to counsellors in secondary schools and children and young people’s community mental health services.

The most recently published information (3 November 2022) can be found at the following link:

Access to counsellors in secondary schools and children and young people’s community mental health services: summary report - July to December 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

The assignment of probationer teachers to individual schools is a matter for each local authority.

The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme. In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.

Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams.This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

• The Scottish Government has commissioned the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) to improve Community Urgent Care (CUC) pathways as part of the wider Urgent and Unscheduled Care Programme.
• In addition to validated nationally collected data from Public Health Scotland, an Unscheduled Care Improvement Dashboard is in creation which will consist of ‘data for improvement’ collected manually by each Health Board Area, which supports tracking of locally held data to reflect the impact of improvement activity, creating visibility of progress.
• Work is also underway through an external partner to evaluate the Redesign of Urgent Care pathway through NHS 24 111 service which launched in 2020 and provides access to local Flow Navigation Centres and virtual A&E teams. This evaluation will assess impact on a range of measures, including patient and staff experience and assess what other outcomes are impacted by the service.

A&E performance remains below the levels we all wish to see, however, we continue to work closely with Boards to support delivery of sustained improvements across a range of areas.

Emergency Departments across NHS Scotland and the rest of the UK, continue to face sustained pressures. The combined impact of pandemic backlogs, Brexit-exacerbated staff shortages, and delayed discharges are all contributing to the challenges the NHS is facing, with significant pressure being placed on our urgent care services in particular.

Through our Urgent and Unscheduled Care Collaborative Programme, we are supporting Health Boards to take action to improve patient flow and reduce A&E delays through a range of actions such as: increasing community capacity such as hospital at home, optimising the use of early and effective triage, rapid decision-making and streaming to assessment areas.

Personal devices owned and used by Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers do not have access to the Scottish Government’s corporate IT network or applications.

Ministers are briefed on best practice in respect of maintaining confidentiality of Scottish Government data when entering office or when a substantial change takes place.

Recently, Ministers have had dedicated briefings on Spear Phishing and the use of certain platforms. This has been done in partnership with the NCSC and Government Security Group.

The number of properties expected to be liable for the Higher Property Rate (HPR) in 2024-2025 before any reliefs are applied is presented in the below tables, broken down in Table 1 by property class, and in Table 2 by council area. Property class is a classification used by Scottish Assessors to describe the type of property, and does not necessarily accurately reflect the use of a property. The Scottish Government does not hold property-level data on industry sectors.

These tables are based on the non-domestic valuation roll as at 1 October 2023.

Figures in these tables are rounded to the nearest 10.

Table 1: Number of properties liable for HPR in 2024-2025 by property class

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

When an individual is allocated a prison cell in any establishment, the cell is equipped with furnishings such as a table/tabletop, seating, a bed and bedding.

The occasion where this may not occur is when an individual is located in a safer cell if it is considered that they are a risk to themselves. These cells are equipped with a bed and bedding, but they may not have a chair or a separate table. Items in use within a safer cell are allocated on an individualised basis.

The following table shows the number of safer cells across the prison estate:

I have asked Teresa Medhurst, Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), to respond. Her response is as follows:

As defined in the Prison and Young Offenders Rules (Scotland) 2011, all female prisoners who require sanitary products are provided with them free of charge. There is therefore no need to record instances of products not being provided.

In line with The Scottish Government’s commitment to co-design the Centre for Teaching Excellence, The Scottish Government has undertaken useful engagement with a number of important stakeholders including COSLA, the Scottish Council of Deans of Education, the General Teaching Council for Scotland, professional associations and trade unions and the Strategic Board for Teacher Education to discuss the overall approach to co-designing the Centre.

The Centre will focus on quality learning and teaching, helping Scotland to remain at the cutting edge of teaching practice by, for example, distilling research and evidence into practical and digestible support for every teacher and practitioner in Scotland, meeting a widely recognised need in the system.

The role and remit of the Centre, how it operates, its interaction with teachers and practitioners, performance measures, and associated costs and timescales will be considered as part of the design process.

In light of COSLA and local authorities’ responsibilities and key leadership role as the employers of teachers, The Scottish Government believes that the Centre would be strengthened if it were to have joint oversight by COSLA and is keen to work with COSLA in this regard.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-23878 on‎ 8 January 2024. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers